Things I've learned by coaching girls at @railsgirls_waw #ruby

Last week Dominika - a Senior Dev at netguru - jumped into the train to Warsaw to participate in 2 days long programming workshops for girls who love Ruby. Here are her thoughts on Rails Girls Warsaw from the...

Last week Dominika - a Senior Dev at netguru - jumped into the train to Warsaw to participate in 2 days long programming workshops for girls who love Ruby. Here are her thoughts on Rails Girls Warsaw from the coach perspective.

I guess I went there because I wanted to see for myself that there really are girls/women who would like to start coding :P and see what kind of people they are.

After talking to some of the participants I was surprised that even people who are so far away from the IT in general, took their time and tried to learn something so different from what they usually do.

My favourite moment from the weekend.

The entire event was great! I think that maybe seeing that my group understands better how coding apps looks like or how a webpage works was especially nice. The moment when you ask questions and hear a (correct) answer, when you see that your group is able to code something simple up, the moment when they realize that in truth it’s all quite simple — these would be my favourites.

Things I’ve learned by being a coach.

I have to admit that I never had a chance to guide a totally non-IT person. That was quite a novelty to me. I’ve learned some things about questions:

— there were so many of them, that I can’t even start to form the number in my head :)) — I’ve anticipated some, but not that many

— there were questions that I wouldn’t dream of asking — regarding topics so obvious to me, that I don’t bother inquiring any more and it would do me some good if were. No doubt.

Explaining things to a fellow coder is so much easier, so getting a new perspective on thing such as each with a block is always fun.

That is no secret that the best way to have a thorough (one with a sound basis) knowledge of a subject is to try and teach someone else, which I encourage everyone to do.

Why people should learn a little coding?

I wouldn’t say that they should, but trying different things is healthy. Variety of activities make our experiences richer. Learning how to code requires a kind of new mindset, usually it is nothing new — simple logic and some ground rules, but it can come in handy not just inside an editor.